I've studied the film industry, both academically and informally, for 25 years and extensively written about it for the last five years. My outlets for film criticism, box office commentary, and film-skewing scholarship have included The Huffington Post, Salon, and Film Threat. Follow me at @ScottMendelson.

The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer.

I’ve written a lot about how smaller-budgeted genre films may-well be becoming the new tent-poles, helping to hold up the studio tent with massive profits when would-be traditional tent poles don’t quite cut the global box office mustard. We get another example this week of just such a thing, as Sony Corporation and MGM debut the $50 million comedy sequel 22 Jump Streetthis Friday. It will most certainly gross less worldwide than Sony’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (which will is about to cross $700m worldwide) but also cost about $200m less to produce. As such, the film doesn’t even have to match or top 21 Jump Street‘s $201m worldwide total ($138m domestic) in order to be profitable.

Worst-case scenario (read – too much marketing), $150 million worldwide gets you into the black. But realistically speaking, 22 Jump Street starts becoming profitable at around $125m, maybe $100m if Sony can count on strong after-theater downloads and purchases. The original 21 Jump Street was a surprise hit, partially because it was surprisingly good. The Phil Lord/Chris Miller comedy played around with the very notion of an action comedy adaptation of a long-ago dramatic television series. This of course has become the duo’s specialty of late, taking established properties (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, The LEGO Movie) and using the safety that comes with a preestablished property to really play around with interesting concepts and ideas.

The LEGO Movie is one of the best films of the year, and a $462 million-grossing worldwide smash. So while financial expectations aren’t too high, it could be argued that artistic expectations are far higher than would normally greet a comedy sequel. All due respect, no one was expecting thematic greatness from Another 48 Hrs. Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum are obviously bigger stars then they were two years ago, as the triple-punch of The Vow, 21 Jump Street, and Magic Mike announced Tatum as a genuinely bankable box office draw in the right project (Broken City isn’t quite the right project, or was the “for Soderbergh fans only” Haywire).

Jonah Hill has found himself a niche as a comic relief supporting player in would-be prestige pictures, earning two Oscar nominations for Moneyball and The Wolf of Wall Street respectively. The Watch stiffed in late summer 2012 ($68 million on a $68m budget), but the benefit of working with an ensemble (Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, etc.) is that you don’t get sole blame when the film crashes. Conversely, it could be argued that Seth Rogen and James Franco got more glory for This is the End ($126m on a $32m budget), but them’s the breaks. And one could argue that Ice Cube‘s box office draw was validated by the $153m success of Kevin Hart’s Ride Along. Ice Cube is a longtime “added value element,” so it makes sense that he has an expanded role this time around.

To be completely honest, there isn’t much to say about this one. The original was beloved by critics and audiences alike, so of course the sequel is going to do well. The only question is whether it breaks out like Rush Hour 2 ($347m versus Rush Hour‘s $244m with an opening weekend of $66m compared to the original’s $33m) or merely stays the course. The reviews are mostly strong (mine is somewhat of an anomaly), the buzz is there, Sony did their job and now it’s up to the film. This is arguably one of the biggest “no risk” projects of the summer.

The Review:

The good news is that Chris Miller and Phil Lord’s 22 Jump Street is fully aware that it is a sequel. Most of its best jokes come from characters openly acknowledging the repetitive nature of the film’s plot and character beats. But the bad news is that, in exchange for a number of clever jokes admitting the “go through the motions” nature of the film, you have to sit through a feature that is indeed a rather repetitive comedy sequel that recycles much of what worked the first time around. There are laughs aplenty and everyone is enjoying themselves, but the film has little to say about today’s college experience or even about today’s sequels.

The picture opens with an amusing “previously on 21 Jump Street” bit before diving headlong into the new story. After a curtain raiser of an action sequence, our two favorite undercover cops (Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum) are sent into a local college in order to find out who is supplying another new hot drug that is hooking and killing young people. The set-up for this new mission is easily the best portion of the film, and I won’t reveal a moment of it save for the fact that the film openly acknowledges its increased budget. But once the mission begins well, as noted above, the whole point of the picture is that this is a somewhat meta-look at formulaic sequels. The only real difference is the all-too obvious role reversal.

The last film earned laughs for making dweeby Schmidt into the popular kid as he integrated with the cool nerds while Jenko found out that jocks are the new uncool kids. This time around, the formula reverses, which is about as witty as the Austin Powers sequels which took a swinging 60′s spy and put him back into the 60′s and 70′s. Moreover, the college setting offers no real topical context for the film. There is no real look at college life today, no references to crushing student debt or a scary employment marketplace. The college life presented in 22 Jump Street is no different from the likes of Animal House or Van Wilder. The high school setting was a real character the last time around, but here there is no character to the college campus they inhabit or the students they interact with.

We’re supposed to care about the disintegrating partnership between Schmidt and Jenko, but frankly most of the “bromance” humor basically amounts to equating any real emotional connection between two men as being “gay.” It’s not that the film is remotely homophobic (there is a running gag about Jenko’s guilt over his use of anti-gay slurs when he was a high school jock), but rather that it still operates under the notion that two men being emotional with or to each other is inherently funny. And for a film that theoretically tries to be more progressive than the standard bro-centric comedy, it loses big points for a brief set piece built around the utter hilarity of prison rape.

Moreover, while Jenko finds himself bonding with a fellow football player who might be the bad guy (there are no Point Break riffs), Schmidt finds himself in a romance with Amber Stevens. Putting aside the implausibility of said pairing (looks aside, they have no chemistry and he’s not remotely charming in her presence), Stevens is giving absolutely nothing to do while an admittedly amusing mid-act plot turn basically removes all of her agency. Faring better is Jillian Bell, who flat-out steals the film and offers plenty of gender-centric commentary. More importantly, a few earned laughs aside, the film spends a solid hour basically replaying the events of the first film. Yes, Lord and Miller admit this, but that doesn’t make it any less strained.

While the film proclaims to be a commentary on sequels, it seems to only be referring to ones from the 1980′s and 1990′s. Yes sequels like Ghostbusters II, Die Hard 2, Terminator 2: Judgment Day,and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York were basically the same formula in a different glass, but today’s sequels are concerned with expanding the universe and truly growing the characters in a way that theoretically sets up a new status quo for the next chapter. We’ve come to the point where even the James Bond films now have an explicit ongoing mythology.

Yes we have an occasional Hangover part II (which was somewhat shocking in its familiarity due to a decade of Pirates of the Caribbean and The Dark Knight-type sequels), but most sequels today follow (for better or worse) the template of The Empire Strikes Back or Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Think The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which spent so much time setting up The Amazing Spider-Man 3 that it forgot to be The Amazing Spider-Man 2. I generally make a point to not tell filmmakers what artistic choices they should have made, but a 22 Jump Street sequel that played with the “dark sequel” conventions would have been both a more up-to-date riff and a less repetitive movie to boot.

The good news is that at around the 70-minute mark the film basically says “Let’s stop doing what we did last time!” and consequently roars back to life. The third act charts its own path, playing with new tools and riffing on new conventions. Yes we can argue that the film backs away from questioning the status quo, in a manner somewhat similar to the Veronica Mars movie, but it’s incredibly entertaining while doing so. The extended action climax is a hoot, and the film ends with an incredibly amusing closing credits sequence. The first reel is terrific, while the natural chemistry of Tatum and Hill keeps the film barely afloat until it finally stars to chart its own course in the final third.

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